


A Sonata for Icarus

by The_Readers_Muse



Category: The Walking Dead - All Media Types, Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Adult Content, Angst, Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Baggage, Episode Related, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, Mild Language, Rare Characters, Supernatural Elements, Unrequited Love, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Readers_Muse/pseuds/The_Readers_Muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took him longer than he cared to admit to realize he was dead. But even longer for him to come to terms with it. Because the truth is he'd never really bought into all that Mystic River, House on Haunted Hill revenge-type bullshit. He'd never been one to pray or go to church, to believe in such things as heaven and hell. ...He still doesn't to be honest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
> 
> Authors Note #1: This is my fill response to a prompt posted on LJ at the TWD Kink Meme community: "Shane: Death Echo. Shane's spirit is a death echo reliving how he died in that field over and over every night." *Rated for: cannon character death, adult language, adult situations, angst, and maybe a hint of unrequited Rick/Shane love if you squint.
> 
> Warnings: This story will contain direct dialogue from the death scene in Season 2, episode 12: "Better Angels," which are italicized and quoted throughout the course of this fiction. – Obviously I don't own this material; it is being used for creative purposes in order to fulfill the premise of the prompt that the story is based on.

_"So this is where you planned to do it?"_

It started with a gunshot.

No, that wasn't right. It was a knife. The same smooth edged blade he'd used at the quarry to fillet lake trout and whittle away chunks of fire wood while he was on watch had somehow made its way into Rick's sheath. It was the same one he'd lent to Morales, who'd then lent it to Jacqui, who'd eventually given it back to Jim under the mistaken assumption that it'd been his in the first place. - Ironically, the truth was he didn't know who the damn thing had belonged to either. He'd taken it off a dead man in the street outside the station before the town had been over run.

_"It's good a place as any…"_

The man had been lying face down on the pavement with a missing left arm, a chunk torn out of his right thigh, and a bullet hole drilled right through the back of his skull. Leon had been too busy puking his guts out into a thigh-high hedge of Indian Plum to tell him what had happened. And at the time he'd been too impressed with the fact that Leon had actually managed to hit what he'd been aiming at to pay much attention to the dead man currently slow cooking into the pavement not ten meters away from their own front door.

_"At least have the balls to call this what it is… murder."_

But in truth, he hadn't had much time to consider either because he'd only just started rifling through the poor bastard's pockets for some ID when a small horde of walkers had rounded the corner on the other side of the street and started running towards them. He'd yanked the knife and sheath right off the man's belt on pure reflex. Yelling for Leon to follow him as he'd stumbled to his feet and sprinted back towards the station. Already on the radio for reinforcements as half a dozen officers spilled out the front door and onto the station's front lawn, guns at the ready.

_"You really believe if you walk back onto that farm alone, no me, no Randall…"_

That was the last time anyone had seen Leon Basset. And to be honest there hadn't been much time to miss him either. Not before the entire world had gone to shit around them. He knew Lam had gone out to find him afterwards, shouting his name over the loud speaker and rolling through the back roads around the station for hours afterwards. He'd even had the Sergeants stuck on desk duty calling the man's cell and radio every five fucking minutes. But it hadn't done any good. Leon had been no where to be found and given the state of the town at that point, there just hadn't been the time or the man power to do anything more than they already had.

Lam hadn't lasted long after that. He supposed that he'd come to like Leon, or at least felt responsible for the rookie at any rate. Either way, he figured it said something when Lam refused to take another partner after been assigned to help FEMA evacuate the town. - It was a few days later that anyone heard heads or tails of him. He'd been in the station, writing up the paperwork on a looting suspect when he'd overheard one of the Linden County Sheriffs screamin' over the radio a few hours after the military barricades had been overrun. Hearing Lam's name being listed as one of the survivors before the transmission had suddenly cut off in mid-word. Devolving into a storm of static no matter how many times they tried to raise them. …As far as he knew Lam had never made it back to the station. None of them had.

_"I want you to hush up!"_

He remembered now, the gunshot had come after.

He gets confused sometimes, getting the order jumbled up here and there as the nights come and go. Once, twice, twenty, a hundred times… There isn't any sense to it; it isn't linear or even relative. Time doesn't flow right here. It fractured and broke, sending him splintering off into a thousand different directions. Pulling him apart piece by piece until there is nothing left but the anger and the hate. Ripping into him like wild dogs slavering over a carcass until the night suddenly ends and a new one rises up in its place. Finding himself inexplicably whole, standing amidst the backdrop of that terrible night just so the whole nightmare could rewind and start again.

Because the thing is, he never makes it past that night.

_"You really believe they are going to buy whatever bullshit story you cook up?!"_

The first time it happened he'd stumbled forward and cried out. Breathing in the lingering smell of burnt carbon and melted vinyl siding as the thick gloom of an unseen fire spread out across the clearing like phantom wisps of escaped atmosphere. He remembered how wrong it had seemed as he'd waved his hands first in front of his face and then Ricks. Choking on the thinning smoke as he'd screamed and tried to pull himself away. He tried to take his own gun, then Rick's. But it didn't do any good. He was just an echo, a spectre, or maybe even some sort of ghost. He couldn't change anything, at least nothing that mattered at any rate.

_"That's just it, it aint no story. I saw that prisoner shoot you down. I ran after him. I snapped his neck. It ain't gonna be easy, but Lori and Carl - they'll get over you. They done it before. They just gonna have to…"_

It was a blink and you miss it type of affair when he'd first appeared out of thin air in the middle of that field. Fingers clenched tight around his gut just like he'd been before Rick's face had floated overhead and everything had gone dark. Only this time he was whole, his clothing and skin unmarred by the blood and filth had that had been spilling out of his gut like water dribbling from a faulty hose only seconds earlier. His nose was unbroken, and hell, even his hair had grown back. Running thick, callused fingers through his mess of dark brown hair as he slowly took stock of himself.

_"Why… Why now? I thought we worked this all out."_

But then he'd realized where he was, and everything changed. This is when he lurched forward, calling out, the moon low and full behind him as the crickets and chickadees chirped in the long grass. But neither of them answered. He tried to stop them…he tried to stop himself, but nothing worked. It was like he was caught in a loop of film that was being played over again and again, and all he could do was watch.

And as much as he wanted to, he found that he couldn't look away. Because for a long moment, he didn't even fucking recognize himself.

Instead he watches his face ripple, the scent of hate and desperation so cloying and thick that he nearly chokes on it. Hearing Rick's pleading tones, and his angry ones. He cries out to warn him, Rick, himself, maybe even the both of them. But it doesn't do any good. He's too late. That moment has already come and gone, and now he's suffering for it.

_"We tried to kill each other man. What you think? We just gonna forget about it all? We gonna ride off into the sunset together?"_

But just as he is about to reach out, to push Rick away or maybe even hold him close, Rick simply melts away. Dissolving into a thousand different particles of light that lance through him the moment before the darkness takes him down. Throwing him back into the nothingness that exists between what he assumes is the sunrise and the sunset. Like the unknown force that brings him back night after night is just waiting for the moon rise.

_"You're gonna kill me in cold blood? - Screw my wife. And have my children, MY children call you daddy? Is that what you want?!"_

It took him longer than he cared to admit to realize he was dead. But even longer for him to come to terms with it. Because the truth is he'd never really bought into all that Mystic River, House on Haunted Hill revenge-type bullshit. He'd never been one to pray or go to church, to believe in such things as heaven and hell. ...He still doesn't to be honest.

He exists here, if you can call it that. It isn't linear or logical and it certainly doesn't make any sense. But he's here all the same. The ground is solid underneath his feet and his skin is firm to the touch. But he can't touch either himself or Rick, nor can he escape from the scene itself. He's caught here, kept tightly leashed by some invisible force, the same one that brings him back here every god damned night to watch the same thing happen over and over again.

Near as he could tell, he was fucking stuck. And god help him, but he'd give anything to be free of it, anything.

_"That life won't be worth a damn. I know you… You won't be able to live with this."_

He sees in double images now. It takes time to understand it. To differentiate between the past and the present, but eventually he gets the hang of it. He sees the clearing like it was the night it happened, and as it is in the present. And through the grace of that double vision, he watches himself rot and fade. Exposed to the elements and the scavengers as his clothing eventually washes clean of the blood and dirt and his ruined skin pulls taunt and sallow.

Eventually he just stops looking.

Months pass, maybe even years before he learns to see it differently. Before he starts to see that there are others sides to the moment, other angles and intricacies that he'd missed the first time around. He sees the desperation in Rick's eyes, the anger, and the pleading. And he sees the rage in his own, the horror, and that manic feeling that had bordered on a joy and despair as he'd contemplated what life would be like without him. …Without Rick.

He watched the moment where he'd wavered, where he'd started to lower his gun as something in Rick's voice had broken through. He wasn't exactly sure what it was, but it was something that he recognized, something that he remembered from the days before everything had gone to shit. Something good, right and appealing in a world that now harbored none of those things.

_"What'chew know about what I can live with?! You got no idea what I can live with – what I live with! You wanna talk about what I can do Rick?! How about what you can do?! Here I am! Com'on man, raise your gun!"_

It's almost beautiful, he realizes. He hadn't noticed it before, but it was. With the field stretching off into the distance like a roll of green-hued silk, a continuous patchwork of rippling grass and overgrown wheat backlit by the moonlight for as far as the eye could see.

But the feeling wasn't just reserved for the landscape. And as the nights trickled past, unchanging and inevitable he begins to see it more and more. It was all there, caught in the lines of Rick's face as the man pleaded with him. Present in the haunted, broken look that had settled in the back of the man's eyes the moment he'd pulled out his piece and told the man to raise his gun.

It was even there in the way Rick's expression had softened just before the knife flared between his fingertips. Rushing forward to rob him of something he'd never thought Rick could take. A single tear rolling down his cheek as his brother had twisted that knife inside him. Ripping through everything he had left and leaving him with nothing as the man's anguished screams echoed soundlessly through the clearing, shattering the heady calm.

_"No. No I will not."_

Some nights he wonders if he deserved it after all.


	2. Chapter 2

_"What happened Rick? I thought you weren't the good guy anymore. Aint that what you said? Even right here, right now you aint gonna fight for 'em?_

The real kicker was that he understood why Rick had done it. In time he was even able to see why the man had deemed it necessary. He didn't agree with it mind you. But yeah, one man to another he could certainly understand it. The irony of course, was that he'd told Rick that he couldn't do what was necessary to keep his family safe. That he wasn't capable of making the bad calls that would sacrifice the few for the many, the ones that would ultimately save your skin even if they weren't particularly right or kind. He'd mocked the man with it, antagonized him. Hell, he'd all but sunk his teeth into the man's heart and torn it shreds himself. And he'd meant every word of it. Present or past, it didn't matter; he answer was still the same.

And yet, here he was, caught somewhere in between life and death because of his big fucking mouth. It was funny, in retrospect. The man always did have a habit of proving him wrong. It was even fitting, in a ghoulish way he supposed.

_"I'm a better father than you Rick. I'm better for Lori than you man. It's because I'm a better man than you Rick. Cause I can be here and I'll fight for it… But you come back here and you just destroy everything!"_

But the point was, he'd come to terms with it. He'd made his peace with what had happened, or as near as he figured he could ever come to it at any rate. He'd considered all the angles. All the options he could have taken, all the chances he'd ignored. He'd figured it out. There had been fault on both sides, but ultimately what had happened was all on him. He'd taken that last step, him and no one else. He'd pushed Rick one step too far and right or wrong, the man had finally snapped.

And yet, he was still here, trapped.

Near as he could figure, that wasn't how it was supposed to work. Wasn't a soul supposed to move on once it had made peace with its death? At this point, hell would be preferable to this…emptiness. But then again, maybe that was the point.

Maybe this was some sort of punishment.

Considering his current state of affairs, he figured that assumption wasn't as far fetched as it might have seemed. After all the things he'd done, he had no misconceptions about where he was going. He just figured that the man upstairs, or whoever the hell dealt with this type of shit would just get their ass in gear already.

But to be honest, sometimes that train of thought only makes him angry. He'd had reasons for what he'd done. Perhaps they weren't good ones, but at the time he'd been able to justify them all the same. He'd killed so that others could live, so that Carl could live. And this it where it got him?!

Somewhat predictably, this thought process only served to inevitably ruin any fragments of peace and serenity he'd managed to scrape together in the intervening months. Putting him right back where he'd started, back to the oppressive feeling of hate and anger curdling in the back of his throat. Coming up from his gut in searing, acid-flavored flashbacks as he was reminded of all the reasons why he shouldn't be here. Why it should be Rick,instead of him having to go through this hell. Why it should've been Rick that had died, not him.

But nothing ever helped. Nothing changed. The weeks and months slipped past unmarked and eventually he just stopped caring. He started to forget. And that was a good thing, he hoped. Because honestly, as the seasons changed and the memories of life before the clearing started to get harder and harder to recall, forgetting the Rick Grimes he'd known before all this seemed a whole lot like a blessin' in disguise. - Maybe then the shock and betrayal he saw reflected in the man's eyes every god damned night wouldn't bother him so much.

_"You've got a broken woman; you've got a weak boy… You aint got the first clue how to fix it."_

He hears snatches of music sometimes. Wisps of other worldly melodies that sound so achingly familiar he can't help but cry. Once he thought he'd heard a woman humming just beyond the tree line. Her voice throaty and deep like one of those old time jazz singers that used to haunt the saloons back before the age of compact disks and automated music.

He'd been captivated by it, haunting the farthest edge of the clearing in an effort to catch a glimpse of her. Ignoring the soul wrenching tug that tightened inside his chest the farther he walked away from the scene - only to realize that he was just reliving a memory of when he'd used to spy on his neighbor's girlfriend singing along to an old vinyl record as she hung up the laundry in the backyard the year his mother had died.

At first he covets it, regardless of the fact that it was just a memory. Sometimes he even hums along, harmonizing with the verses until he drowns out what is happening behind him and sings his way from memory to memory. Singing along to choruses that carried on about shadows being taller than souls and instrumental refrains meant to portray cheating women and their mischievous ways.

But soon enough it becomes just another reminder that he is alone.

The night he stops singing the earth moves in the present. Snapping tree branches and rattling through the silence like a night terror. He half wonders if it might be a sign. But when he looks down at his body the next night, eyes catching on the sheen of his ribs lancing out of the ground like bones poking out of the very Earth, somehow he doubts it.

_"Raise your gun!"_

He sees walkers sometimes. Sometimes it is a herd. Sometimes it's a smaller group. But most times it is simply one - one lonely, wandering predator that shambles its way through the moonlit clearing, purposeless and rotted through. Making its way through the undergrowth until it stumbles into the tree line and disappears from sight.

He figured something must have happened after he'd died, seeing as though his body was still lying where it'd fallen. The air was too silent, too still. Even if Rick had spun some sort of story, the others would have come lookin', or at least stumbled over him at some point. No, something had happened and the group had left. But unfortunately for him, the trees and grass weren't talking. And even if he pressed the boundaries of whatever was tying him to this place, there was still about half a mile of rolling hills and fallow pastures between him and the farmhouse.

Had it been walkers? Had the group been attacked? What if it had been a herd the size of the one they'd seen on the highway just before Sophia had run off? They wouldn't have stood a chance. Even with the vehicles and the guns. How many of them had made it? Lori? Carl? …Rick? …The baby? …His baby.

He wonders if it's his fault. He remembers slamming down on the trigger on pure reflex when Rick's knife had flashed through the air and sliced into his gut. He doesn't remember the sound, but he remembers the recoil, the vibrations that had coursed down his hand and into his fingers with all the subtly of an electric shock. Contrasting strangely when set against his weakening pulse, as the man twisted the knife deep into his chest and ripped it downward.

_"You're going to have to kill an unarmed man."_

He wonders if they're all dead. If he's last sorry sonofabitch left that knows he'd even existed. Who knows what he'd done, what he'd sacrificed, and what he'd lost just to get a few more measly months out of life. Sometimes he wonders if it is even better that way. - But no matter how many times he asks himself that question, his answer is never the same.

Years pass. Maybe even a millennium before he comes back to himself, shaken out of the endless loop misery when a truck suddenly downshifts on the highway. Engine sputtering and nearly stalling as someone who clearly had no idea how to drive a standard slammed down on the clutch and shifted into the wrong gear.

And all at once, before he could even so much as process the shift, he was back there. Back in the moment nearly twenty years before that night in the clearing, holed up in the Grimes's garage trying to teach Rick how to drive stick in his old man's mint condition F-250 Ford. Him, awkward and far too confident for his own good, and Rick, acne-splotched and gangling as he stripped the gears and slammed down far too hard on the clutch.

In the memory, the smell of burnt rubber and leaking transmission fluid filled the air as Rick screwed the pooch completely and the engine started hissing smoke like the Georgian skyline on the fourth of July. Sending them beetling out of the garage like twin bats out of hell. Caught between full blown laughter and pissing their pants in fear as they considered what Rick's old man was going to do to their sorry asses when he found his prized 1987 Ford F-250 with a engine full of melted transmission lines and stripped gears.

It had taken years for him to get Rick anywhere near a standard transmission after that. And truth be told, the man had never quite gotten the timing right.

He laughed into the stillness as the memory wound down to a close, startling himself back into sanity as his awkward bark of laughter melded together with Rick's hysteric sobs somewhere behind him. Echoing in his ears as the grating roar of the dying engine floated through the misty air. The sound strangely muffled by a fine layer of snow as the spectre of Rick yelled hoarsely into the empty clearing. Dropping the knife, blood stained and dripping into the grass beside him in favour of gathering him up and holding him close, stilling his last feeble movements with the comforting press of achingly familiar skin seconds before the world went dark.

He blinked. Taken off guard when he realized it was winter again. What did that make it now? Ten, maybe fifteen winters since that night in the clearing? Somewhere along the line he realized he'd lost track. Time didn't work the same way here as it did in the present. It looped and twisted in on itself until a man couldn't even trust his own judgement as to where one night ended and another began.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye as the scene played out behind him. Still every bit as real as the night it'd happened as he shivered and turned away, straining to hear the lingering echoes of that old, rust-encrusted junker still trundling down the interstate not five miles away. He soaked in the chill as he picked up the fading sound of metal grating against metal as the driver shifted into the wrong gear, before correcting themselves with a high pitched squeal of over taxed brakes and a muffler that sounded like it had seen better days.

Whoever it was, they had balls traveling in weather like this, especially on that highway. He'd give them that.

And just as the darkness took him back, back down into the nothingness that existed between the sunrise and the sunset. For the first time in a long time, he wondered if Rick still pumped the clutch that half a second too early.

_"Watch my hand…Nice and easy… Easy does it."_

He heard people once, real people. He'd never seen them up close, they'd never really ventured far from the house. But he'd sure heard them. They were a loud and carousing bunch; think Woodstock all jumbled together with the undead apocalypse and some seriously bad banjo music. But they'd seemed pretty decent, at least as far as he could hear at any rate. They were the kind of people who had decided to deal with the dead walking by generally enjoying the fuck out of whatever time they had left in this world. As near as he could tell, they spent two weeks around the farm drinking, dancing, laughing, and partying before they moved on, squashing back into their fleet of cars and carrying on to the next town, the next out of the way place.

And even though the closest he'd seen of them was a few smudged shadows weaving drunkenly through the cattle pasture on the odd night when the music had been loud and the people on watch not as vigilant as they should have been, he'd missed them when they'd left. Somehow it hadn't felt so lonely knowing there was a bunch of living, breathing people not a half a mile away. Sleeping in the same beds, walking through the same rooms, and sitting on the same, overstuffed couches in the parlor as they had…as he had only a few years before.

It was still a lie. But at least it was a comforting one.


	3. Chapter 3

_"Now listen to me Shane. There is still a way back from this. Nothing has happened here. We're gonna lay down our guns and we're gonna to walk back to the farm together…"_

It's been years now, maybe even decades. He knows because things have changed around him. The trees on the edge of the clearing had grown. Their seeds had spread and taken root, dotted through the clearing like errant, half-grown children. The field had long gone fallow. Springing up and then mouldering back down into soil more times than he could count – the new growth covering dull porcelain as the grass and roots curled around his bones like a living skin.

It was fitting, he supposed. …The whole circle of life thing and all that.

The difference between the past and present is jarring now. With tall shrubs and half grown saplings interspersed throughout the clearing where there had once been only wild wheat and tall grass. It was disconcerting and distracting because it forced the memory to splinter, getting caught in mid-play like one of those old fashioned record players trying to make sense of a chip in the vinyl.

It was hard to describe. But like a camera going in and out of focus, the scene would often stall – pausing in mid-motion as Rick or that awful specter of himself would crash through the barrier of the past and into the present. With one of them walking right through a half grown sapling or a leaf-stripped hedge before snapping back into the memory of how the clearing used to look. Sort of like that one DVD in your collection that has a scratch in the disk. …The one that always freezes in mid-scene despite all your attempts to skip past it.

The first time it happened he'd nearly keeled over, feeling sick to a stomach he no longer had as a phantom-like vice suddenly closed around his neck. It'd felt a whole lot like he was being pulled in two different directions. Like his soul was being torn apart right then and there before the scene suddenly corrected itself, rewinding all the way back to the start just so he could relive the entire fucking thing all over again.

If there really was a god, he was certain that the smarmy bastard didn't like him all that much.

He didn't know when they'd arrived, but one night, just as the moment cycled back to the start. A tired, desperate little whimper issued from between his clenched teeth as he lurched back into the field, they were suddenly just there.

Perhaps they'd arrived sometime during the day, or maybe even the day before. The specifics didn't matter much, only the fact that they were here, now. After all this time… in spite all the odds, they'd come back. …They'd come home.

_"Back to Lori… Back to Carl… Put this all behind us…"_

For a long moment he simply stood there. Letting the ghosts shift and ripple around him, as the nightmare began anew. But he barely even noticed the scene playing out behind him, unable to do little more than blink, staring wide-eyed through the veil that separated the past from the present.

His hands fell limp at his sides as he watched them crest the final hill that stood between the field and the farm house. Trying and failing to quell the little flutter of hope that sparked in his chest as they began angling towards him. Relishing every whisper of conversation, every distant echo that heralded half a dozen car doors slamming as the rest of the group began unloading the vehicles back at the farmstead.

He wondered how many of them were left. He wondered who they'd lost – and perhaps even who they'd gained. …Friends, allies, and enemies alike. He wondered if the world had indeed kept on turning, and if things had gotten better. But most of all, he wondered why there were four of them making their way towards him through the overgrown pasture.

It wasn't until they'd cleared the rise that he recognized the man walking at the front. …Rick. Awareness hitched as he took the man in from head to toe. Cataloging everything from the slow, careful way the man put shoe to ground and the worn, burnished gleam of the man's old Colt as the barrel shined through the ragged holster at his waist. All easy posture and too-long legs as the man's spine curved inward with age.

Because even now, in spite of everything, he would have recognized that man anywhere.

And interestingly enough, it was a skill that ended up being put to the test, because if one thing was certain, it was that the years certainly hadn't been kind. Somewhere along the line Rick had gotten old, and unlike those that are lucky enough to age gracefully, it didn't look good on him. His hair was shot through with silver and peppered with grey. Even from a distance the man looked old, scarred, and tired.

During the intervening years, deep lines had taken up residence on the man's previously youthful face. It was as though someone had taken a knife and cut into him. Creating craggy pits and hairless patches of smooth, pink skin where dark beard used to grow. Even his eyes looked as though they'd seen the deepest pits of hell before clawing their way back again. Shining out, dark and far too bright, as the man surveyed the field around them, apparently lost for words.

…Though, all else considered, he supposed there was probably a premium on aging gracefully these days…

Carl was there. That was what he noticed next, all tall, strapping and powerful. The boy – or should he say man, was clearly in the prime of his life. There was something in the way that he owned his stride or how Rick's old hat sat more firmly on his head than it had as a child that belayed a confidence and self-awareness that some men go their entire lives without ever attaining. Hell, coupled together with the way he rested his hand on his holster and slowed his stride to match Rick's, it seemed as though Carl had grown into more than just his father's old uniform.

His gait was slow, but confident, with a just hint of that boyish swagger he remembered from back before all this. Before the laws of nature had flipped and the worst thing Carl had to worry about was cleaning his room and making sure he did his homework on time. But like Rick, he wasn't unmarked. In fact, he now sported a strip of folded cloth over his left eye and an ugly scar that stood out, angry and raised across the side of his neck. Almost as if someone had tried to slit his throat from behind but had failed halfway through. But somehow it worked for him. It made him look hard and seasoned. But not bitter. Not changed in all the ways Lori had feared.

As strange as it was to admit, Carl had grown into a man. His freckles had faded and his face had thinned; having lost the chubbiness of youth to at least a few days' worth of dark brown stubble and a face smoothed together with angled lines and high cheek bones. In a way he couldn't get over it because even now, Carl still looked so much like Lori - so much like Rick that even in the dark the mere sight of him was enough to make his chest ache.

And as he stared across the distance at the man he no longer knew, he figured that at the end of the day, he could add yet another regret to his ever growing list. Regret for everything that had happened. Regret for being too wrapped up in his own god damned problems that he hadn't taken the time to recognize that it wasn't just him that was suffering. Regret for not being there to watch the child he'd cared for, the child that he'd shed blood for, grow up into a man.

Sometimes he swore that his life was just one big list of regrets. But other days he wondered why the fuck the universe hated him so god damned much. Then again, maybe that was the point to this whole mess, that you needed a balance to gain traction on either side. …Right or wrong.

Maybe that was what had really killed him in the end. Not Rick. Not Lori. Not this whole messed up world. …But himself.


	4. Chapter 4

_"Damn you for making me do this Shane! This was you, not me! You did this to us!"_

It's only when Carl turned around to say something to the man standing beside him that he remembered that they were not alone. And that there were two other people standing just off to the side, letting Carl and Rick take the lead as they scanned the perimeter of the clearing.

And suddenly, just like that, reality fucking stuttered.

A jolt of awareness flowed through him when he realized who it was. It was akin to something electric as recognition thrummed through the chill. The feeling was startling and downright warm as it lanced through him like a ray of sun to the soul.

Because he knows that face, he knows those eyes and that nose. They were everything he'd imagined since the moment he'd realized that Lori was carrying his child – their child. That there was something of him that was going to grow up with his hair and his eyes, something good and right in all the ways that the world wasn't anymore. A child he could protect and care for, a child that wouldn't have to suffer through his old mistakes.

Only in spite of all his promises, he'd still gone and missed it somehow. Because that child had already grown up and now there was a young woman standing in front of him. She was dimpled and dark haired, with his nose, Lori's eyes, and a sharp little chin that he couldn't seem to place on either of them.

Truth be told, he couldn't stop looking at her.

Hell, as much as he knew he didn't have the right, he took in every detail, greedily taking in everything from the curve of her face, to the tilt of her lips. From that mole that stood out on the right side of her chin and the graceful arc of her spine as she hunched her shoulders against the growing chill. And in spite of the faint outlines of half-healed bruises and the spidery lines of long healed scars that were strewn across her tanned skin, he couldn't help but think that she was as close to perfect as anyone could get.

As hard as it was for him to believe, Rick had kept her safe. But it hadn't been easy. That much was for certain. She'd grown up not knowing comfort or ease. Shit, she probably didn't even know the true meaning of the word. She'd come into this world only to experience the taste of stale sweat and hardship. Her life had been one defined by roughness and difficulty when he'd meant to give her the world. He'd had it all planned out. Nothing would have been too good for her, he'd promised himself that much.

...His girl.

But more than anything his eyes got caught up on the obvious. Like the way her thumb was rubbing across the protruding swell of her belly. Her small waist and flared hips looking strained, yet somehow still beautiful as they carried the extra weight of a child of her own.

Obvious in the easy way the tall man he didn't recognize came up and put his arms around her. Pressing a lingering kiss into the jut of her shoulder as the four of them looked down at where his bones protruded from the ground. Glinting like shards of broken porcelain in the moonlight as they peeked out from amidst the heavy Georgian undergrowth.

Obvious in the way he almost refused to register the fact that despite being host to a mess of thick, dirty blond hair, the same man who was now rubbing his hand across of the swell of her stomach, had Daryl's crossbow slung over his shoulder and was host to that same, trademark Dixon glare that Daryl had leveled at him close to a hundred times before. He almost refused to register it because honestly, it was something that made him consider thoughts he wished he'd never dreamed up in the first place. Considering the fact that the same man that was now running his fingers through her hair, the same man that had pulled her in close as she leaned into his chest was a dead ringer for a man he'd barely even respected let alone liked.

But even then, even he could see that there was contentment there. It wasn't just familiarity or convenience, it was love. You'd have to be blind not to see it. It was everything he'd never had, everything that'd been taken from him before he could summon up the balls to take it for himself. But he didn't begrudge them it. He couldn't. Not her. Dixon or not she had someone, and above all he had to be grateful for that.

The heady silence only grew from there. And after a handful of moments, he stood witness to the way her expression suddenly changed. Because as the men talked, all hushed voices and careful eyes, whispering on about a proper burial and something to do with mending the farmhouse's roof, she turned away.

And like a puppet wired up with a dozen different lengths of string, he found himself moving with her. For the first time in a long time, he stepped out from between the transparent ghosts that were flickering and yelling behind him, drowning out the sounds, the shadows, the voices, in favor of crossing through the long grass to stand at her side.

His heart was beating in his throat when he brushed against her. Forcing himself to still as his arm passed right through her, moving through her flesh as easy as a hot knife going through butter as he swallowed hard and let a few inches of space open up between them. -Giving himself a few tentative beats before squaring his shoulders and forcing himself to get a grip.

It's wasn't until he was standing level with her, her skin bathed a stunning bleached ivory in the moonlight and mist, that he sees what had so clearly caught her eye. She was looking off in the direction of the farm house with all the subtlety a woman who was already picking out curtain fabrics and color schemes in the back of her head. In fact, it was her look more than anything that told him that they were here to stay rather than just passing through to pay their respects. Like they saw the exact same thing that the rest of them had seen in this place the moment they'd set eyes on it all those years ago.

And for reasons he knew all too well, he couldn't help but feel like everything had come remarkably full circle.

_"This was you, not me! Not me!"_

They left before the night ended – so much like the memory that was still playing out behind them that he nearly did a double take. Heading back in the direction of the farm as a small chorus of voices, some he recognized, but more that he didn't, called them back. Back towards the light and the warmth, back towards everything he was missing and perhaps everything he didn't quite deserve when it all came down to it.

It didn't stop him from hoping though, maybe it should have, but it didn't. That was the nature of it he supposed. Hope was slippery thing, all shot full of grey and easily lost. But like anything, all it took was a single spark and it had the ability to come roaring back. …But in his case, hoping for what, that was the real question.

Rick was the last to go. Trailing behind Carl and the others as the dark haired woman took their hands in hers and led the way back towards the farmhouse. Giving Rick his space as the man he'd once called brother slowly started down the hill behind them.

And as the darkness started rushing back, for the first time in a long time, even Rick's agonized scream as the memory played to a close behind him couldn't quell the excited quiver of anticipation that strummed in his chest. Rising up in the back of his mind like the first lilting strains of some long forgotten memory.

Because the older man looked back when he reached the pasture gate, tottering over the uneven ground as he used the wooden gate to steady himself. His posture stiff and careful, like the way old age makes you when your body knows you're on your last years. The distance and coming dawn had reduced him to nothing more than a mere shadow by the time Rick looked back. But even then, he gazed back at the moonlit backdrop with the air of a man with unfinished business.

_"…Not me!"_

It was the next night, near as he could tell that Rick came again. Only this time he came alone. He wasn't sure how long the man had been there, but when he materialized in the middle of the clearing with that same gut-wrenching tug, Rick was already standing knee deep in the low-riding brush and wild wheat.

And perhaps he shouldn't have been as surprised as he actually was when he realized that they were standing in nearly the exact same place as they had on that night, nearly three decades before. Facing each other from across the close distance as the moon rose up between them, accompanied by the memory playing out behind them as the angry words and muffled curses that only he could hear echoed into the silence.

Only this time, Rick didn't say a word.

He sucks in a long, ragged breath as something in his mind just clicks. Like unbeknownst to him, this was what this whole thing had been leading up to this entire god damn time. Because before he could think it through, he found himself taking that first awkward step forward. His heart was beating so loud that he swore the man should have been able to hear it as he took another step – and then another. Closing the gap between them even as man's profile began to slump. Exhaustion, disappointment, regret - it didn't matter. He was still here. …Rick was still here.

It wasn't until he was about a meter away that the man suddenly looked up. His watery blue eyes going wide and piercing as he seemed to look directly at him. Mouth opening and closing for a few staggered beats as his friend…his brother struggled to find his voice.

"…Shane?" Rick whispered wonderingly, somehow managing to sound sad, confused, and hopeful all at once as he too took a small, tentative step forward. His voice, raspy and weak, but still rich with the lingering hint of that honest southern lilt he knew he would recognize anywhere.

But most of all the man says his name like he knows. Like he can somehow sense that he is with him right here, right now. And just like he would have back before everything had fallen apart, Rick still didn't have a clue what to say.

And for the first time in what felt like a century, he smiled.

His phantom heartbeat slowed as the scene around him started to fade. Dissolving right before his eyes as the Rick from thirty or forty years ago falls down on his knees and pulls him in, tearing the knife from his gut as his own bloody hand reaches up to cup the man's face. The moment thinning into obscurity as the mist of the coming morning pierced through the shadows like individual rays of light.

But the truth is that he isn't looking at the past anymore. Because as the siren call of nothingness stretches out to greet him, he looks up. Shading his eyes from the glare as the early morning sun filters across the horizon, the air strong and clear like someone had just whisked away some invisible curtain that had been drawn across his vision since this whole nightmare had begun.

For the first time in decades, the night ends and the sun rises in the east. Bringing with it a hint of his old smirk as a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. And for his part, Rick just sighed beside him, contentment and a weathered sort of unrest leaching into his posture as the older man moved forward. Unknowingly standing shoulder to shoulder with him as a new day transformed that all too familiar Georgian skyline.

And as the distant horizon bore witness to the first day he'd seen in over a lifetime, setting the world on fire in a gorgeous blaze of over-saturated color and inescapable warmth – that was the moment when he finally let go. Surrendering everything he had left to that distant horizon the same moment that Rick knelt down where he'd fallen all those years ago and placed his hand across the soil he now called home.

The night doesn't come again after that. Not for either of them. And considering the circumstances, he figures that is a good thing.

**Author's Note:**

> "Life is an echo. What you send out comes back. What you sow, you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others exists in you." - Zig Ziglar.


End file.
